Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Season Ticket Renewal Starts

Today Sporting Kansas City announced the beginning of their season ticket renewal process for the 2012 season. The team has put out the pricing as well as the renewal process. Overall, pricing as a whole isn't increasing by much at all as a whole, in fact for some it is going down. The Member's Club price is going down from $280 to $260, the East Stand midfield and it's sun issues is going down $40 from $700 to $660. The West Stand has the biggest drop with a $100 drop from $800 to $700. The East Stand pricing is staying at $500 as is the West Stand goal line at $600. The South Stand is seeing a $20 increase from $360 to $380 and the Stadium Club price is increasing $150 from $1,250 to $1,400. The team has also added two new price areas, the East Stand Goal Line for $400 and the Budweiser corner for $1,200.

The ticket pricing again for this season is based on a 20 game season. So it would seem likely that we'll once again see a 17 game league season with 3 special games as we had this year. It's not surprising that it appears that MLS is moving away from the balanced schedule next year.

Renewing early also has it's incentives. Rewnew in full before Tuesday, September 6th, and you get your choice of a game in the Budweiser Stand or a pass for you and a guest to the Victory Suite, along with your choice of Access Packs. The two access packs are set up for people that renew using the payment plans. Pack A is shield club access for a game and scoreboard recognition, while Pack B is VIP access on the field for warm ups, and your photo on the field. All of these incentives are for the 2012 season.

While the overall price as gone down some, the price as a whole is going up for most. When you try to renew, along with the basic price of your season tickets (as listed above), there is $40 in service charge and Village West Tax. The service fee is understandable, last year the service fee was $10 to $20 depending on what renewal process you used. So that takes care of probably $20 of the $40, but what about the Village West Tax. It appears that the Unified Government and Village West now tax events at the Legends area with a $1 per ticket charge. So for example, I'll be paying $300 for my tickets in the Member's Stand next year. But that's basically what I paid last year after you factor in the $20 service charge I paid with my installment plan that I did. Still it's interesting that there's been a new tax added to events at Village West. That's something that could certainly cause some issues in the future. It'll be interesting to see if KC can keep or even expand their current base of over 11,000 season ticket holders.